Presenting Jane The Virgin, winner of the BEST SHIPPING DILEMMA EVER award.

OK. So. I've never mentioned this show, because I don't watch this show despite seeing promos every week, and nothing about its soapy nonsense looks appealing to me at all, though I occasionally click on TVLine articles about it. However, dollsome does watch this show. I have generally been ignoring all the gifs, but then this set came up, followed shortly thereafter by this set (warning: from most recent episode, I think, and said ep will be discussed behind the cut), and now I need to sit down and talk about Michael and Jonathan immediately.

Backstory: 2 weeks back or whenever the promo with her considering losing her virginity to Jonathan (who was just "Adam Rodriguez" to me at that point) came up, I assumed he was a random hookup, and although I lacked the time to make an actual post about it, I meant to make one along the lines of "I feel I have the authority to say that if Adam Rodriguez comes a-knockin', virgin or not, the appropriate response is 'shut up and do me.' I mean, hands down, 10/10, would bang with minimal hesitation on the first date."

I only put this here for illustration purposes, but I now realize it's also probably how he and anyone else would and should react to my comments.

On the one hand, I really like that this show has managed to go more than one full season without making the title a lie, but at the same time, I cannot stress enough how much I would have been OK with him being her first and not even pledging an emotional commitment. This is an exceptionally rare feeling, is why I'm stressing it.

But, I gather from the above expression that this did not happen.

AND THEN MICHAEL. I have seen his face/name come up a couple of times on TVLine, and I've been very "ehh, whatever, that sounds like a dumb breakup backstory so who cares about them now." But when I looked at this:

with the warm and patient eyes and the just-overgrown-enough-to-curl-a-bit hair and more importantly, his expression and that sentence, my heart stopped for a second and then immediately exploded in a glitter bomb full of tiny heart-shaped confetti. That, combined with her apparent confidence/lack of fear in saying this to him, has caused some intense spontaneous shipping.

Canon-wise, apparently they did just get engaged, so the world is full of shiny happy shipper-friendly imagery, and oh boy, that is some artfully pretty kissing they've got going on there. I like this one because it illustrates the importance of one's s.o. having soft and touchable hair. (forever bitter in that department re: Klaine).

It's clear, canon-wise, that Michael is the way to go. But because I don't plan to track canon that closely, and am therefore not wedded to any particular timeline, I'm free to multi-ship using largely images from my own imagination. Which brings me back to Jonathan for a second.

I actually hopped on Wikipedia to see if I could get a sense of who Michael is as a character/what their background is -- incidentally, apparently he was an ex-fiance, making that backstory even dumber than assumed, so luckily I do not have to endure that part -- I tripped over something else completely unexpected:

Adam Rodriguez as Jonathan Chavez, one of Jane's teachers at Grad School.

To which I was like:!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I HAVE A LOT OF QUESTIONS, NUMBER ONE, HOW DARE YOU. I thought he was just some hot hookup! I was here for the physical chemistry and physical chemistry alone, how very dare you throw MY FAVORITE TROPE IN THE WORLD onto THAT FACE? He can't be hot and well educated and her actual teacher??

I need to put a pin in that because hell.

And also because, when I recovered from that, I finally made my way to Michael's name and the first thing I learned is that he's a detective.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME.

So what you're telling me is that this woman has two equally attractive love interests, featuring two of the professions I find most attractive, and I had to find all this out on one night when I have no time to freak out about this? (even though I just spent well over an hour flailing about it and will pay for that with either sleep loss or late work)

Bonus: He also dislikes Rafael due to Jane's, and eventually Rafael's, mutual attraction.

Ok, well, if Rafael is that sleazy-looking dude from the first gif (which I confirmed he is), then we are even more in agreement. That is a real Rumpelstiltskin/Belle type of arrangement there.

Whew! I think I'm done. It's just, I've been deprived of sufficient fandom time for a week; it had to boil over somehow. I'm mad this got out before I finished articulating my feelings about Superstore, where I am also having a festival of shipper flails but in a very different way that I'm dying to go over in detail, but Amy/Jonah will just have to wait for another day.

P.S. Nope, finally found the Wikia proper. Apparently Michael & Jane dated for 2 years? All of it well post-high school? And still managed the celibacy thing? I like your face so much.

P.P.S. ...I actually started the whole Wiki search because I wanted to know why fans thought he would die soon, wondering if he had some kind of illness, and finding no evidence of that I promptly forgot all about it. Until it was brought up again on the Wikia, and it occurs to me that him being a homicide detective opens the "sudden death syndrome" field wide open.Damn it. I can tell myself I don't care about canon all I want, but we all know that is most probably a lie and that I would bitterly file it away in my grievance folder of TELEVISION HATES EVERYTHING I LOVE should it happen.